Quotes

I don't think Hollywood knows what to do with me. I would imagine that when it comes to romantic comedies, my name would be pretty low down on the list.

But you see, I have played more good guys than I have played villains.

Growing up in a particular neighborhood, growing up in a working-class family, not having much money, all of those things fire you and can give you an edge, can give you an anger.

How many movies do you see when you can say this director really knew what film he wanted to make? I can count them on the fingers of one hand.

I applaud anything that can take a kid away from a PlayStation or a Gameboy - that is a miracle in itself.

I got obsessed with classical music, I got obsessed with Chopin, with playing the piano.

I had a guitar when I was 6 or 7, a plastic guitar with the Beatles' faces on it. It would be a collector's item now. It would fetch a hefty sum, I imagine.

I hadn't worked for a couple of years so I thought it would be nice to earn some money and pay the bills.

I have three kids who like Harry Potter so I was sort of aware of it. You can't really move from it: it's on buses, in stores, it's everywhere. One of my kids has read the books; the other two are too small but they like the movies.

I never told my father I loved him before he died, and I have a lot of issues about that. They're all swimming around in my head, in my heart, unresolved, and in a way it felt fitting to dedicate the film to him.

I suddenly got obsessive about boxing and Muhammad Ali around the time he was fighting Joe Frazier. I went off and did boxing. I looked incredibly good in the gym.

I used to like Batman when I was a kid. I was about five years old and my mum had a 1960s belt - remember those wide belts - and I stuck packets of cigarettes to it and painted it yellow and that was my utility belt. And I had a sheet from crepe paper and a mask and that was it.

I wanted to tell this specific story more than I wanted to throw a camera around.

I was brought up by my mother and my two sisters, although they're older than me and fled the nest very young, so I was technically raised as an only child, but I was very much loved.

I wasn't ever a huge fan of comics. Just not one of those kids, you know?

I'm not the best audience for that because I'm not a great science-fiction fan. I just never got off on space ships and space costumes, things like that.

If one could have a wish, or an alternative life, I would've liked to have been John Lennon.

Interesting things come your way but as you get older, your lifestyle changes. I don't want to travel; I don't want to be in a hotel room away from my family.

It's always hard when you're playing someone for a lot of people out there who are going to see the movie after reading the books. There's a communion between a reader and the writer, so people will have an idea who Sirius Black is and I might not be everyone's idea of that.

It's becoming increasingly harder and harder; there's no such thing as independent film anymore. There aren't any, they don't exist. In the old days you could go and get a certain amount of the budget with foreign sales, now everybody wants a marketable angle.

My big love was the Beatles. I was more into music.

People have an idea that one is in control of a career, a lot more than you really are. You can engineer things to an extent. But you are at the mercy of what comes in across the desk.

People imagine that actors are being offered everything and you are not. So things come in and sometimes there are things that I want and can't get a meeting on, or go to a different actors.

Rather like Batman, I embody the themes of the movie which are the values of family, courage and compassion and a sense of right and wrong, good and bad and justice.

Shakespeare doesn't really write subtext, you play the subtext.

So Harry Potter came in and it is nice that I have kids of the right age. I took them to London and they walked around the set and met Harry Potter and that is thrilling.

Speaking very generally, I find that women are spiritually, emotionally, and often physically stronger than men.

The film follows very much in the tradition of social realism, because I wanted to see a subject like this tackled with honesty.

These were people who came from a real drinking culture, where your passport to manhood was that, at fourteen or fifteen, you go to the pub, drink beer, play darts, tell sexist, racist jokes. You've got to be homophobic - all that. You've got to be that guy at the bar.

To be able to do this job in the first place you've got to have a bit of an ego.

To be honest, I'm a little tired of playing bad guys. I long to do a comedy. But it was fun knocking Indiana Jones around.

Wanting to be a good actor is not good enough. You must want to be a great actor. You just have to have that.

Well, I needed the work - that's the honest answer. I haven't worked for a while, a couple of years. So I thought it would be nice to get back to work and earn some money.

What's fascinating is that when you write a script, it's almost a stream of consciousness. You have an idea that it means something, but you're not always sure what. Then when you get on the set, the actors teach you.

When I directed, it was in a bubble, a creative bubble and I was very spoilt there. I'd like to do it again but it would have to be under my method.

Your own barometer is all you have to go by, and often what makes a good director is knowing when not to say something. On occasions you can find yourself on a film set where the person who is wearing the director's hat is only trying to justify his position.

We're given a code to live our lives by; we don't always follow it but it's still there.

It's a double-edged sword because in one sense you have a lot of material to work with, but in a strange kind of way that puts up a framework that you have to keep within. You can't play Beethoven with pink hair, but to an extent, because no one has ever met him, who's going to tell me that's not Beethoven?

With Beethoven I said I wanted a role where I didn't have to do anything stupid with my hair. My agent said, 'Read it again.'

I've done so much R-rated work, it's nice to have a job you can show your kids.

I had this idea of myself as a shy, kind, sweet chap. I was working with Winona Ryder and she turned to me and said, 'Fuck, man, you're really intense.' I was so shocked, I went, 'What do you mean? I'm not intense, I'm sweet.' My passion and energy get mistaken for anger.

I guess what I'm trying to say is it's not Dracula crying, it's Gary Oldman, but using the technique of the character. The emotion is mine, because I don't know what it's like to be undead and live 300 years.

Any actor who tells you that they have become the people they play - unless they're clearly diagnosed as a schizophrenic - is bullshitting you.

I used to be under the impression that in some kind of wanky, bullshit way, acting was like therapy: you get in and grapple with and exorcise all those demons inside of you. I don't believe that anymore. It's like a snow shaker. You shake the thing up, but it can't escape the glass. It can't get out. And it will settle until the next time you shake it up.

I set aside three weeks for rehearsals. Those long scenes are like a play. But I wanted things loosely structured, more like jazz. Though there was very little improv on screen, sometimes we'd improvise, rev up, to get the energy before shooting. One rule that I broke was that you need to leave a little air between people's lines, that you can't overlap dialog because you'll clip words on a cut. But you can overlap dialog, even though editors don't like it. Otherwise, it's your turn to talk, my turn. Another thing: I used only one camera! I'd say to the cameraman, 'I need it from this angle!' From my brief association with Isabella Rossellini, I got a new appreciation of Pasolini, and how he was religious about where the camera should go, whether it was too high, too low. I would ask questions on the set, quietly: 'For this emotion, is the camera angle too wide, is the camera too low?' I wanted night to look like night! I bullied the cameraman a bit until he got into the swing. You could pick up the light meter and say, seeing how little light, 'You've got to be fucking joking!'

Change is vital to any actor. If you keep playing lead after lead, you're really gonna dry up. Because all those vehicles wean you away from the truths of human behaviour.

There's an uncanny thing that chemically happens to you when you're in the chronic stages of alcoholic drinking. I have been able, on occasions, to have two bottles of vodka and still be up talking to people. That got very frightening. By nature I'm an isolationalist, so my boozing was at home, thank you. I was not a goer-outer. I mean, I didn't drink for the taste and I didn't want to be social. Someone once described alcoholics as egomaniacs with low self-esteem. Perfect definition.

To be able to do this job in the first place you've got to have a bit of an ego.

I applaud anything that can take a kid away from a PlayStation or a Gameboy, that is a miracle in itself.

I suddenly got obsessive about boxing and Muhammad Ali around the time he was fighting Joe Frazier. I went off and did boxing. I looked incredibly good in the gym.

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